Reading about the incident involving the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland and how the police raided his home made me worry about what is happening to individual rights in this country.  Apparently, without first knocking on the door or otherwise announcing their presence, the police broke down the front door of the mayor's home in order to enter the property.  This was definitely an act of extreme violence that would have a terrorizing effect on anyone who experienced it.  I remember when people used to think that their home was their castle.  But if breaking the door down was not enough, there was also the senseless killing of the family's two labrador dogs.  That act was so shocking, cruel and contemptuous.  If it is true that the police believed they were going to be attacked by the animals, why don't they carry tranquilizers for events like this one in which animals may be involved?  If an incident like this can happen to people with certain political power and clout, like the mayor of a town, then one can only imagine how other common citizens can expect to be treated by the police if they are the ones under suspicion and surveillance out of sight and mind of the general public and away from the glare of the press.  You wonder if this is just a way that the police use their power to show the rest of us mere mortals how powerful they are and how helplerss we can be in the face of their onslaught.

Another action taken by the police was to handcuff and bind the mayor's mother in law, a fifty year old woman who had been peacefully cooking artichokes in the kitchen before she saw the masked men with guns running towards the house.  According to the newspaper article in the Baltimore Sun and other coverage of the incident on CNN, besides handcuffing her, they left her laying on the floor next to one of the dead dogs that was lying in a pool of its own blood.  Why must a police intervention with citizens suspected of criminal activity have to be such a terrifying experience?  Aren't we citizens presumed to be innocent until proven otherwise? This intervention seems more of a punitive measure than an evidence gathering raid.